


Say it with flowers

by onion_kid



Series: Say it with flowers [1]
Category: LazyTown
Genre: I learned about lazy town a few days ago and I regret nothing, Language of Flowers, M/M, Magic Revealed, Pre-Slash, Robbie needs a Friend, Sportacus is piningTM, Time Travel Fix-It, extradimensional kidnapping, robbie is oblivious, stephanie is a nosy kid, though to be fair sportacus isn't exactly being obvious, welp this went to a dark place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9318227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onion_kid/pseuds/onion_kid
Summary: Stephanie's been in Lazytown for a while, and she thinks she's got it all worked out. She's got lots of friends and Sportacus is always there to save the day.Then one day, she finds Sportacus planting flowers in the park.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's really been a long time since I've posted something. I might come back and tweak a few things once it's all done, but first I'm going to focus on getting it done :)

It’s early in the morning when Stephanie wakes up, a bare half-light filtering in under her curtain, but she can already tell that she won’t be able to go back to sleep. She’s restless, for some reason, an agitated kind of itch that Sportacus had said might be growing pains. He’d recommended going for a nice walk, just to stretch out her muscles, and Sportacus has never given her bad advice, so she pulls on her dress and shoes and sneaks out of the house. She can hear her Uncle snoring from the street; he clearly hasn’t woken up yet.

It’s still early enough that the sun isn’t quite over the horizon. She should be able to see the sunrise from the park if she’s lucky. The air is fresh and cool, although it’s strange walking around town when nobody else is about. Although she isn’t, she realises. A familiar figure in blue is kneeling down by a park bench, poking at something on the ground. It’s Sportacus!

Unless it’s Robbie Rotten in disguise, she thinks suddenly. She’s never seen him up this early, but he has to put his schemes together at some point, she supposes. She sneaks over to investigate and taps him on the shoulder.

“Oh, hello Stephanie,” Sportacus says placidly. He doesn’t cringe away or jump ten feet in the air, which means this probably isn’t Robbie in disguise. “What are you doing up this early?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I remembered that you told me to take a walk when I felt restless, and I did. It really helped. Are you making mud-pies?”

Sportacus looks back from Stephanie to the hole he’s dug in the dirt. “No, no. I am planting flowers. I thought that it might look nice here beside the bench. They are not flowering now, because it is not good to move plants when they are flowering, but they will have lovely white flowers when they grow a little more.”

“So they don’t grow sportscandy?”

He laughs. “No, they don’t. But plants make our air fresh so that we can breathe it, so they are still doing a very important job. Would you like to help me plant them?”

“Yes please,” Stephanie says. Sportacus hands her a tray of seedlings and shows her how to gently push one out without damaging it. 

“Now all you have to do is put it in the hole, and fill the dirt back in around it,” Sportacus explains. “Try not to knock any of the dirt away from the roots, because they will get damaged. Yes, exactly like that. You are a natural at this, Stephanie.”

“Thanks, Sportacus. What about the other one?”

“That one will go on the other side of the bench, I think. I will dig the hole, because the ground is quite hard here, but I would love it if you would help me plant it too.”

“Sure,” Stephanie says, and watches him vault over the bench and dig the spade into the ground. “What kind of flower is this?”

“Poppies, because I already had some poppy seeds,” Sportacus explains. “I noticed that this is the bench that Robbie Rotten likes to sleep on most. There is an old language of flowers that says that poppies are good to help people sleep. I thought that they would be a good fit for this place. Here, Stephanie, it’s time for you to put the plant in the hole.”

She eases the tiny seedling carefully into the hole and pats the soil down around it. Sportacus shows her how to carefully water the base of the plants, then stands up, hands on his hips, and nods decisively. 

“Good job, Stephanie!” he says. “Now I’ve got to go!”

He flips off, watering can in one hand, leaving Stephanie to sit on the bench and watch the sunrise. It was nice of Sportacus to think of Robbie like that. Maybe if he could sleep a little better, he wouldn’t get mad and interrupt their games so much. 

But if Robbie didn’t interrupt them, he’d never get to play with them. And Stephanie’s pretty sure that Sportacus likes it when Robbie joins in with their games.

Stephanie frowns. Robbie always tells Sportacus to go away after he saves him, but Sportacus says it’s just because he’s embarrassed. Maybe if _she_ made friends with Robbie first, he could stop being embarrassed and play with them all. Robbie’s really just a big softie, after all. All she has to do is make friends with Robbie.

How hard could it be?

* * *

 

It’s late in the afternoon when Stephanie finally gets a chance to talk to Robbie on his own. She’s been planning this all day, trying to work out what she might be able to say to him to get him to spend some time with her. All the best games she knows are ones for a lot of people, not just two. She can’t just ask him to be her friend. Robbie’s tricky, and if you want to be friends with him, you have to be tricky too.

She can’t change her plan now. Robbie’s already slinking off, making for the edge of town much faster than she expected. His legs are much longer than hers, and she has to run to try to keep up with him. She _was_ going to try to sneak after him, but he ducks behind that weird cow billboard and she realises that she’s going to lose him if she doesn’t say something. 

“Robbie, wait!” Stephanie says. She rounds the billboard to find Robbie looking down at her suspiciously.

“What do you want?”

She hesitates. Maybe she should come back later. She likes playing with Robbie, but Sportacus had said that sometimes some people need a little more space than others. Robbie doesn’t look angry. He just looks worn out.

“Spit it out, Pinkie, I haven’t got all day.”

Here goes nothing, she thinks. She puts on her best innocent face, all doe-eyes and smiles, and says, “I was wondering if you could teach me how to do my hair. It keeps getting in my face when I’m playing, and since yours always looks so nice, I thought maybe you might be able to help me?”

“I do always look good, don’t I.” Robbie says, looking into the distance as he absently smooths down his hair. After a few second his gaze snaps back to Stephanie. “I _suppose_ I could take some time out of my busy schedule to help you. What’s in it for me?”

“Cake?”

Robbie shakes his head. “Nope, nuh-uh, I’ve already got as much cake as I want. I don’t need _you_ to make it for me.”

Oh no, she didn’t plan for this. She thinks and thinks, but she honestly doesn’t know what else Robbie would want. She’s not going to offer to help get rid of Sportacus, because she _likes_ Sportacus. She doesn’t want to stop playing, either. It’s actually a bit sad how little she knows about Robbie, considering how much time he spends around them. She knows that he likes sweets, and people being quiet. That’s it. 

“Please, Robbie. Everyone knows you’re the best at this! Nobody else knows enough to be able to help me, not even Sportacus.”

Robbie frowns, then kneels down and looks her straight in the eyes. He stares at her for the longest ten seconds of Stephanie’s life. Then he abruptly straightens up and makes for a hatch Stephanie hadn’t noticed.

“Fine then. Come along, my time is important, the faster you learn the faster you can leave.”

He throws the hatch open and gestures at Stephanie to follow him, then jumps down the pipe. She climbs the ladder and looks down into the pipe. It’s deep and dark, and all of a sudden it hits her that she’s following the town villain into his lair.

Robbie’s voice echoes up the pipe, telling her to hurry up, and she grits her teeth. Robbie needs a friend, and she’s going to make sure he has one. She takes one last look into the pipe and jumps.

She shoots out the far end of the pipe and lands upside-down on a squashy orange armchair. She’d expected something dark, all blacks and muted purples, but there’s actually a lot more orange in the room than she expected. Robbie himself is standing off to one side, covering his mouth as he yawns hugely. 

“I don’t suppose you thought to actually bring any hair ties,” he says wryly. She shakes her head and he huffs, yanking drawers opens and spilling their contents out onto the floor. 

“Aha!” Robbie says, and holds a couple of brown hairties up in triumph. “Not quite your colour, but we’ll make it work. Sit up properly.”

She slides around until she’s sitting upright in the chair. Robbie spins his finger to indicate that she should turn around, so she faces the back of the chair and sits cross-legged. Her hair doesn’t tangle easily, which she’s grateful for, because Robbie isn’t quite as gentle as he could be as he brushes it out and pins one half off to the side. 

“I don’t suppose you know how to plait?” Robbie asks. She tries to shake her head before she realises he’s still holding some of her hair, and winces. 

“No. Sorry.”

“Then we’d better start there,” Robbie says. He’s doing something strange to her hair, and before long he’s tied it off with a hairtie and is working on the other side. “You’ll be better off with a braid, since your hair is so short. I’ll braid it for you today, and you can practice plaiting. It’s not difficult once you’ve been shown how.”

She does her best not to squirm. “This feels funny.”

“Of course it does. Have you ever done your hair properly in your life? No, _don’t_ answer that.”

Stephanie shuts her mouth. 

“At any rate, you don’t look as horrendous as you did a few minutes ago. What do you think?”

She looks in the mirror that Robbie is offering her and gasps. “I look so different! How did you do that?”

Robbie scoffs. “I didn’t even put any makeup on you. You look just as annoying and pink as usual.” 

“I love it, Robbie,” she says honestly. “Can you show me how to do it myself?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Pinkie. I’ve got yarn around here somewhere. Don’t move.”

He wanders off to rummage through the drawers again, and Stephanie lays back, slides down towards the ground and kicks up off the chair, pushing herself into a handstand. Her hair doesn’t get in her face at all! She’ll have to do something really nice to thank Robbie for this. Maybe she’ll bake him a cake after all. He _said_ he didn’t want one, but Robbie says a lot of things that aren’t really true. 

“Must you do that?” Robbie says as she tumbles back to the ground. 

“I had to test it out,” she says defensively.

“Whatever. Come over here, and _walk_ , please, there will be no flip-flopping about while you’re in my house.”

She follows him around to the back of the chair, where three differently-coloured strands of yarn have been tied into a knot and safety-pinned to the back of the chair. He sits her down and arranges her hands around the yarn.

“Hold the strands away from each other like this. You need to pass the purple strand on the right over the top of the white strand in the middle, so they’re in opposite places. Yes, just like that. Hold them apart again so they don’t get tangled. Now pass the blue strand on the left over the top of the purple strand in the middle, so they switch places.”

“Like this?”

“Exactly. Then you repeat those steps, except the colours have moved places, so instead you’re always just moving an outside strand over the middle one, right and then left.”

Stephanie screws up her face in concentration and twists the white strand on the right over the blue strand in the middle, then rearranges her hands so the strands are all separate. She looks up at Robbie to check she’s doing it right, and he nods.

“Now the left.”

The blue strand twists over the purple, and Robbie nods at her once more. “You’re a pretty good teacher, Robbie.”

“No, it’s just easy,” Robbie says. “Now sit there and practice until you’ve used up all that yarn. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you until you’re done.”

“Of course, Robbie,” Stephanie says, and sets to work twisting the strands of yarn around each other. She’s really slow at it, nowhere near as fast as Robbie was when he did her hair, but the repeating pattern of purple, white and blue starts to show up and she feels really proud of herself. 

“Look, Robbie, I did it!” she exclaims when she reaches the end of the yarn. “I did just what you told me to and it-”

She stops abruptly and covers her mouth when a loud snore comes from the other side of the chair. “Robbie?” she whispers.

He doesn’t respond. She sneaks around the other side of the chair to find Robbie curled up, eyes shut. He’s even sucking his thumb. He must really be tired to fall asleep at this time of day. No wonder Sportacus was worried.

His blanket’s fallen on the floor, so she pulls it back up over him and crawls up the pipe. She’s not quite sure how she’s able to, given how steep it is, but she can, so she’s not going to question that bit of luck. The hatch itself is really heavy, but she opens it too, with a little bit of effort. Maybe Robbie did something with one of his machines so that he could come and go all the time. She thinks the hatch would be hard to lift even for Sportacus, and Robbie’s definitely not Sportacus.

She climbs down the ladder and looks around. She’s never been around the back of the billboard before. There’s not really anything there except the entrance to Robbie’s lair and some flowers, gently bending in the breeze. They’re really pretty. She’d pick one, but the ground around them is all muddy, like someone’s just watered them. 

It can’t have been Robbie, because _she’s_ been with Robbie, and before that he was busy trying to convince Trixie to move to Mayhem Town, and before _that_ he was sleeping on the park bench. The park bench, which also had newly-watered flowers around it, courtesy of Sportacus. 

These ones aren’t poppies, though. Stephanie knows what poppies look like, and these are very different. They’ve got a white spotty petal at the top, two reddish petals almost like arms, and a bowl-shaped red petal at the bottom. She’s never seen a flower like them before. And why did Sportacus plant them here, where no-one would see them?

No, she realises, that’s wrong. _Robbie_ would see them, almost every day. She bets they have a meaning, too, just like the poppies. Maybe they’re meant to help Robbie calm down or something. The library in her home town would have a book on plants, but Lazytown is so small that it doesn’t even have a library. How is she supposed to find out what they mean if she doesn’t even know what kind of plant they are?

Suddenly she brightens. _She_ might not know what they are or what they mean, but she knows who does.

Pixel is right where she expects him to be, in his room surrounded by his computers. Lazytown might not be lazy any more, but it’s getting dark outside. They can’t play in the dark.

“Hey Pixel,” Stephanie says as nonchalantly as she can. “You can find anything on the internet, right?”

“Yeah, of course. What are you looking for?”

“I’ve seen some flowers around town and I don’t know what kind they are, that’s all. I want to be able to tell what kind they are, and how they grow, and when they grow, and what they mean, and everything. Sportacus has been so busy lately that I don’t want to trouble him, but I really want to know more!”

“Hm,” Pixel says. “I could invent something that does that. It shouldn’t be too hard to integrate a photographic imager with an information database, and maybe with…”

He trails off, fingers tapping at the keyboard almost too fast for Stephanie to see. She knows better than to interrupt him when he’s hit inspiration, so she smiles and writes him a quick note.

‘Thanks, Pixel! I really appreciate it.’ 

He’ll find it when he eventually surfaces, she thinks, and sticks it to the outside of his door.

She _could_ just ask Sportacus. But she thinks about the sad smile he has sometimes when he talks about Robbie, and she doesn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be really short and cute, and then I accidentally went and added a whole bunch of plot. I'm so sorry. There will be cute Sportacus/Robbie goodness eventually, I promise. 
> 
> Special thanks to SmileMyBoy, starscreamy, saltedpin, ponymacoroni, howsentimental, Tabatha, eternal_song, indigorose50 and HappyKonny for your sweet comments, I really appreciated them :) And thank you everyone who left kudos or just read and enjoyed this so far.

Stephanie discovers, to her delight, that it’s not uncomfortable to sleep with the braids in. She inspects them in the mirror when she’s brushing her teeth after breakfast, and they look a little fuzzy, but her hair’s still back out of her face, which is the important thing. Robbie really did a good job.

She grabs her water bottle and runs out to the park. All the other kids are there already, arguing over which game they want to play today. Sportacus is over in a tree, doing pull-ups on a sturdy branch. 

“Hey Stephanie! You look really different today.”

“Thanks, Sportacus,” Stephanie says, skipping over to him. “Robbie helped me do my hair yesterday so it wouldn’t get in my face while I was playing. Look at this!”

She does a handstand, then spins around a couple of times. 

“Wow Stephanie, Robbie did a really good job. Is that where you were yesterday afternoon?”

“Pinkie!” Robbie says, suddenly materialising behind them. Stephanie jumps in shock. “You left this behind. Don’t think you can waltz in and clutter up my lair without cleaning up after yourself.”

He throws something small and light at her and storms back off to his lair. “Sorry!” she calls. 

“What’s this?” Sportacus says, jumping lightly down from the tree and picking it up off the ground. It’s the yarn she learned how to plait with yesterday, except instead of knots Robbie’s clamped the ends with a bit of metal and attached it to a clasp. “It looks like a bracelet.”

“Robbie helped me make it. He’s teaching me how to plait and braid. It didn’t have the clasp on it when I left yesterday, though.”

Sportacus smiles, that wistful half-smile that Stephanie’s starting to see on him more and more often. “Robbie might be a villain, but inside he is really a good person, I think.”

Stephanie looks at the bracelet Sportacus is handing to her. She’s never had somebody make something for her before. Back home, she got plenty of gifts, but they were all bought from the store. It feels… special. She unclips the clasp and wraps it around her wrist, but it’s just a bit too tight for her to clip back up herself. Sportacus closes it up for her, and it fits her wrist just right. She’s really going to have to do something nice for Robbie to make him feel special too.

“Sportacus, can you help me with something?”

“Of course, Stephanie. What can I do?”

“Well, I want to make a cake for Robbie as a thank-you present. But I want it to be a really nice one.”

“So you want to make a _good_ cake instead of a _big_ cake, right?”

“Right! I saw one in a bakery back home that was really fancy, with strawberries and tiny icing flowers, but I’d never be able to do something like that all on my own.”

“Well Stephanie, I don’t have much experience baking cakes, but I am happy to try.”

“Great! Can you meet me at my house just after lunch? It’ll be too hot to play outside then.”

“Of course I can!” He looks down as his crystal flashes. “Someone’s in trouble. I’ve gotta go, Stephanie.”

She waves goodbye to him as he flips away. 

“Stephanie!” Trixie calls. “Come play soccer with us!”

“Sure!” she says, running after them. They play soccer for a while, and she even scores a goal, but eventually they retreat to the shade of the clubhouse. She couldn’t concentrate properly on the game, anyway. All her thoughts keep straying back to Robbie.

“It sure is hot out,” Trixie says, fanning herself with a piece of paper. 

“Well, it _is_ summer,” Pixel tells her. “Hey, Stephanie, you’re being really quiet today.”

Stephanie looks away from the window; away from the green plants growing happily by the side of the park bench. “I’ve just been thinking, that’s all. Do you guys remember what Robbie was like before Sportacus came to Lazytown?”

“ _Before_ Sportacus came to Lazytown?” Pixel frowns.

“He was always inventing stuff,” Trixie offers. “I remember he used to give us things to try out, but they never worked. Eventually he just gave up and gave us things to play with instead.”

“Robbie was the one who showed me how to build computers,” Pixel says suddenly. “I can’t believe I forgot that. I guess it was a long time ago.”

“It was just after his twin brother visited,” Ziggy adds. “He got a lot nicer after that.”

Stingy shakes his head. “No, Robbie was always nicer. _Glanni_ was his brother that lived here first, and then he left, and Robbie stayed.” 

“Glanni was really creepy,” Trixie says, shuddering. “That was why we always stayed inside before Sportacus came. Nobody wanted to run into him by accident. And then he left, but we were all used to it by then. There were weeds everywhere, and nothing worked. It was easier to just stay inside.”

“Remember the time that Robbie cleaned it all up? And then the next day it was right back how it had been before. That was really weird.” Stingy adds.

“ _Robbie_ cleaned up the town?” Stephanie says. Robbie’s nice to her and all, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s really lazy. And weak. And gets tired all the time. There’s no way he could clean up the entire town in just one day. “That doesn’t sound right.”

Trixie shrugs. “Robbie’s a villain, he does weird things sometimes.”

“Don’t worry about it, Stephanie. Sportacus is a hero. If Robbie’s plotting something, then Sportacus will save the day.”

“No, that’s not it,” Stephanie says, frowning. “He just seems… lonely, that’s all.”

“We used to think that too, but he says he doesn’t get lonely. Ask anyone in town. Robbie Rotten doesn’t play with us, and he never has.”

“But he does,” Stephanie argues. “He dresses up and joins us in our games all the time.”

“Yeah, so he can ruin them,” Trixie says. 

“But you just said that he does nice things as well. Pixel, what about when he taught you how to build computers? Was that villainous?”

“Robbie taught me how to build computers?” Pixel asks. “Wait, no, you’re right! I can’t believe I forgot that. How did you know?”

“You just told me,” Stephanie says, confused. She looks at each of her friends in turn, but nobody is agreeing with her. “Five minutes ago.”

“I don’t remember that,” Stingy says. “Do you, Trixie?”

Trixie shakes her head. “Are you feeling okay, Stephanie?”

“Maybe you should go home and lie down for a bit,” Ziggy suggests. “It’s really hot. Maybe you’re, um, D-hide-rated.”

“Yeah,” Stephanie says slowly. “Maybe I should.”

Trixie passes Stephanie her water bottle and pats her shoulder comfortingly. She walks home slowly, sipping her water and thinking. It wasn’t like her friends to act so strangely. They’d never forgotten something so quickly before. 

“Are you okay, Stephanie?”

She looks up to find Sportacus standing outside her house. Right, she’d asked him to meet her there! How could she have forgotten?

“Something weird is happening, Sportacus,” she says. “I don’t really know what yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was talking to Ziggy and Trixie and Pixel just then, but then halfway through the conversation they forgot a bunch of things they’d already said. Nobody remembered it except me, but the things I remembered were true, so I can’t have imagined them. Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

Sportacus frowns. “I have, but not in a long time. We’d better go inside.”

He doesn’t stop frowning once they’re inside, which isn’t like him at all. “This is very serious, Stephanie. Are you sure that your friends forgot?”

“Definitely,” she says. “They were telling me about the nice things Robbie had done for them in the past, but then they didn’t remember talking about it at all.”

“Robbie?” Sportacus says, almost to himself. “But why would Robbie want people to forget that he’d done good things?”

“Do you think Robbie did this?”

“I don’t know who else could have.” Sportacus kneels down so he can look Stephanie in the eyes. “Stephanie, do you believe in magic?”

“Of course not, silly. Magic isn’t real.”

Sportacus takes her by the hand. “Stephanie, listen to me. Magic absolutely is real. It is real, and very dangerous, so I need you to listen closely to me, okay?”

Stephanie nods her head. 

“Something is very wrong in Lazytown, Stephanie. I don’t know what it was, but something very bad happened here, and somebody is using magic to cover it up.”

“You mean Robbie?”

“It has to be Robbie. I’ve seen him do magic, tiny things when he thinks nobody is looking. It’s in a lot of his inventions. Even that bracelet that he gave you has a good luck charm on it.” He shakes his head. “And that’s the bit I can’t understand, Stephanie. Robbie’s hiding something, but he’s no villain. He does nice things whenever he thinks no-one’s watching. But he still insists on playing the part and refusing to be anybody’s friend.”

“He helped me out, though.”

Sportacus smiles wryly. “I know. I have been trying to make friends with him for so long, and one little girl does it in a day.”

“Hey! I’m not _that_ little!”

He ruffles her hair and she grins. “I know you’re not. But there must be something different about you. Maybe part of the spell means Robbie _can’t_ make friends with the rest of Lazytown. I wish he would tell me what happened. If I knew, I might be able to help.”

“I’ll have to find out then,” Stephanie says. “If I’m different, then maybe I can help Robbie too.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Sportacus says. “Magic isn’t a game, and you don’t have anything to protect you from it.”

“I’ll be careful, Sportacus.”

“Good girl. Now, you wanted my help with a cake?”

“Yeah!”

* * *

It’s cooled down by the time Stephanie wanders over to the hatch behind the billboard. The cake is boxed up and tied with a ribbon, though she’s not quite sure how she’s going to get it down without spilling it everywhere. Last time she went down the pipe she didn’t exactly land on her feet.

“Robbieeee,” she calls, knocking on the hatch. “I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” he calls back. “I’m busy.”

“Too busy for cake?” Stephanie asks. His periscope shoots up out of the earth, eyes her suspiciously for a few seconds, and then shoots back down again. Ten seconds later, he’s climbing out of the hatch, sniffing the air suspiciously.

“Is that chocolate?” he asks.

She holds it out to him proudly. “Yup! It’s all for you.”

He unties the ribbon and flings the lid off to the side. Stephanie wants to tell him off for littering, but, well, he _is_ a villain, and this is supposed to be his present, not a scolding. She watches as he slides a finger through the icing and licks it delicately.

“Acceptable,” he pronounces, then pokes some red and white decorations on the top of the cake. “What are these?”

“Strawberries,” Stephanie says.

“I wasn’t aware that strawberries grew in the shape of tiny animals.”

“Sportacus carved them,” Stephanie admits. “He made the flowers out of icing, too. He said they were. Um. Tulips, I think.”

“They’re very yellow,” Robbie says.

Stephanie shrugs. “Are you going to take the cake or not?”

Robbie gasps. “Why on earth would anyone turn down cake? Don’t be ridiculous. This is mine, and you can’t have it back.”

“Well, I’m glad you like it.”

She walks away, smiling slightly, glad that she’s finally got to do something nice for Robbie. He’s not such a bad guy, really. If he just stopped-

“Wait!” Robbie calls.

She turns around. “Is something wrong?”

“Did- would you like some? I mean, there’s _sportscandy_ all over the top, you can’t expect me to eat _that_.”

Stephanie laughs. “Sure, Robbie, I can eat the sportscandy for you.”

“Well, good,” he says, and climbs the ladder and jumps down the pipe before she can say anything else. She grins and jumps down herself, landing in the fuzzy chair just in time to see Robbie sweep his entire arm across a bench, clearing it by dumping everything onto the floor.

“Maybe this place wouldn’t be such a mess if you didn’t do things like that,” she says. 

“Little girls who say rude things don’t get any cake,” Robbie says. “Are you here to comment on my life choices, or eat cake?”

“Um, definitely the cake one. Sorry.”

“Good. Then come over here and use your mouth for something that’s _not_ spouting petty insults.”

He cuts two thick slices of cake and sticks a fork into each. Stephanie takes one, then watches as Robbie jumps up to sit on the countertop, legs swinging wildly. She looks around for somewhere to sit, but all she can see is the orange fluffy chair, and she really doesn’t want to spill cake on that by accident.

“Don’t you have any chairs?”

“I thought we agreed your cakehole was for cake, not comments on my interior decorating scheme,” Robbie says. “Come sit on the bench, it’s clean.”

She puts the cake down for a second and jumps up next to Robbie, even though her mother had always told her it was very rude to sit on counters. After all, it’s Robbie’s house, and if Robbie says it’s okay then it must be. She doesn’t comment on the fact that he hasn’t taken the strawberries off his piece of cake.

“Robbie,” she says through a mouthful of cake. “Why do you hate Sportacus?”

Robbie chokes. “Don’t _say_ things like that,” he says. “I could have spat out my cake.”

She looks at him sternly. “Don’t avoid the question, Robbie.”

Robbie sighs, and puts his plate of cake down, half-finished. “I don’t hate Sportacus. I just need him to leave town, that’s all.”

“But why?”

“When did this become a game of twenty questions? Listen, Stephanie, you’re a good kid, but you can’t come in here with cake and expect to suddenly fix everything. That might be how it works in Sportadork’s world, but it’s not how it works in mine.”

Stephanie tilts her head to the side. “Because of the magic?”

“ _Yes_ , because of the - who told you about magic?”

“Sportacus,” Stephanie says simply. 

“Of course he did, the no good, lousy elf,” Robbie grumbles. “I suppose he told you all about how I’m not even supposed to be in this universe, too.”

This time _Stephanie_ almost chokes on her mouthful of cake. “Yes,” She lies quickly, swallowing the cake before she can choke on it again. “He wouldn’t tell me everything, though.”

Robbie stares at her. “I don’t suppose you’d consider forgetting about this forever?”

“Why are you asking? I thought you could make people forget.”

“That wasn’t _me_ , that was-” Robbie stops. “If I tell you, will you promise not to tell any of your little friends?”

“I promise,” Stephanie says. After all, Sportacus isn’t _little_.

Robbie eyes her suspiciously, but seems satisfied with what she’s said. “Sit still and shove some more cake in your mouth, I’m only telling you once.”

Stephanie spears a tiny strawberry bear with her fork and shoves it in her mouth, chewing vigorously. 

“Well,” Robbie says slowly. “It all started when I invented the Dimensionaliser 3000…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to those of you who noticed which flower I snuck into this chapter :3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, hopefully this all makes sense. It's not the longest chapter, but I'm going to come back and edit this a bit when I have more time. Right now I just want to finish it before I run out of time, and it seems cruel to deprive you all of an update because I want to be a perfectionist about it =P
> 
> I promise that next chapter they'll actually get out of the lair.

Robbie Rotten was really very proud. He’d been an inventor for years, and created some things he was quite impressed with, if he said so himself, but none of them held a candle to his new Dimensionaliser 3000.

“Alright, boys,” he said, motioning for Bobby, Tobby and Flobby to move back. “This is it. If everything goes right, I should be transported to a parallel universe, a dimension where something changed along the way and the timelines split off.”

“Good luck, boss!” one of them called, throwing up the shielding so they weren’t accidentally caught in the blast.

“Thanks, Tobby!” Robby yelled back, and pulled the trigger on the device. Light swirled around him, and he felt himself being pulled into a vortex. He felt as though he could almost understand the universe. The answers to a dozen problems revolved around him, and he marvelled at the myriad of things he hadn’t quite been able to see, before the universe spat him back out unceremoniously on a cold, dark floor. He looked along the ground, still clutching at the Dimensionaliser, up a pair of leather boots, past a black catsuit and into the grinning face of another man. His clothes were a drastic contrast to Robbie’s trademark striped suit, but there was no denying who he resembled.

“Hello,” Robbie said. “I think you might be me.”

His doppelgänger smirked. “Do you? Tell me more.”

So he did. 

* * *

 

“That was the first time I met Glanni Glaepur,” Robbie says, sliding down from the bench and toying idly with his fork. “I didn’t realise what he was then, of course. All I saw was myself, _me_ from another universe, and I was… well, enthralled. Instead of learning to wield technology, like I did, Glanni wielded magic like a weapon.”

Stephanie’s eyes go wide. “Did he put magic on _you_?”

Robbie nods. “I trusted him unconditionally from the moment we met. The universe I came from didn’t _have_ magic, or at least I didn’t know about it, so I had no idea that he might have been influencing me with it. He introduced me to the town as his brother, but the hero, number Nine, could tell what I was. He tried to help me right from the start. _Glanni_ convinced me that he was trying to trick me.”

Stephanie gasps. “And then what?”

“Then he enlisted my help in trapping Nine. With my mechanical genius and his magical knowledge, we put together a plan. If I’d thought about it at the time, I would have known better, but I was so caught up in my own cleverness that I didn’t think about it until it was too late.”

“Is that why Nine left town? Because you helped Glanni get rid of him?”

Robbie laughs bitterly. “No. The Mayor and Bessie had taken a few of the children on a trip to catch butterflies, and I managed to lure him away by putting the Mayor and Bessie in danger. I didn’t realise that getting rid of Nine wasn’t Glanni’s goal anymore. What Glanni _really_ wanted was the Dimensionaliser so he could hop between dimensions and cause havoc. Nine saved them and brought us all back to town, but by then Glanni had used the Dimensionaliser and hopped right into a different dimension.”

“But… that means he’s gone, right? If he went to a different universe, why’s _this_ version of Lazytown in trouble?”

Robbie looks away and paces down to the other side of the lair, sighs, and paces back.

“It was still a prototype, Stephanie. That was the very first test. And when Glanni jumped dimensions, he took everyone else in Lazytown with him.”

Stephanie goes very still and very white. “That’s why so many of the houses are empty,” she says quietly. “And why none of the kids have any parents. That’s what they’ve forgotten.”

Robbie nods. “Your uncle and Miss Busybody aren’t the strongest people. They were starting to break down under the strain of being the only adults left in town. As for the kids, all of their families had been in Lazytown. With the adults gone, they didn’t have anybody left. I thought it was _kinder_ to keep them here, just until I could get their parents back, rather than try to send them into the foster system. I thought I’d be able to get everyone back.

“So Nine put a glamour over the town so that they wouldn’t realise so many people were missing,” Robbie continues. “They’d think everything was just like it was before. What neither of us realised was that the illusion was built off the shared memories of the remaining citizens, and Lazytown everyone remembered had a hero and a villain. If I tried to do something nice, or if Nine was seen helping me, the illusion would start to crack. I discovered very quickly that if I wanted to fix Lazytown, then I needed to play along. After all, I caused this. If it wasn’t for me, these people would still have all their friends and family.”

Stephanie shakes her head. “It was Glanni, not you. You can’t blame yourself for something he did.”

“I’m the one who made the Dimensionaliser in the first place. I tried to rebuild it, to get everybody back, but nothing _worked_. The original had a lot of really rare, expensive parts in it. I… don’t have _anything_ in this world. I’ve read the books Glanni left behind, learned charms and enchantments, hoped that maybe something will help me find a way to get them all back, but. In the end, I couldn’t find anything.”

He wipes his eyes with the back of one shaking hand, and Stephanie realises with a start that he’s been crying. 

“I bet Sportacus could help you. He knows about lots of things. He could probably help you look through all the books and try to find the right enchantment.”

“Weren’t you listening?,” Robbie snaps, tears still sliding down his face. “Lazytown _needs_ to have a hero and a villain. If I befriend Sportacus, the glamour breaks, and the adults will go mad with grief. Your little friends won’t be much better. Nine left because he couldn’t deal with it. The only reason I can tell _you_ is because there never _was_ a Stephanie in Lazytown before you.” 

“Then I’ll help you,” Stephanie says desperately. “There must be something I can do to help. Can I learn magic?”

Robbie takes a deep breath of air and looks at her. “I don’t know,” he says, a fraction calmer. “There’s a test in one of the books. Go sit in the chair and wait while I find it.”

She jumps off the bench and walks down to the fuzzy chair, tiptoeing between the machine parts and general rubble scattered on the floor. Robbie disappears and reappears over in the corner, rummaging through a bookshelf she hadn’t noticed before and occasionally still gulping down sobs. He was kind to her, and now he’s crying, and it hurts that she doesn’t know what to do to help. She sits down and kicks her legs anxiously against the chair until Robbie pulls a battered purple book from the shelf triumphantly. 

“Okay, hold still,” Robbie says, looking straight at her. He takes a deep breath and clicks his fingers.

Nothing happens.

“Maybe I did it wrong,” he says. He clicks again, but there’s still nothing. Stephanie’s not quite sure what was meant to happen. He frowns and clicks one last time, and Stephanie stares as a vague purple glow starts to emanate from Robbie. She can’t _quite_ look at it, but it’s definitely there. 

Robbie waves his hand in the air and it disappears.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” he says. “Sorry, kiddo. No magic for you.”

Stephanie crosses her arms. “There must be something I can do to help.”

“You’re still too young to learn this,” Robbie says, crossing the room and putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, “but sometimes there isn’t anything you _can_ do. Sometimes you just have to live with things the way they are.”

“No,” Stephanie says stubbornly. “Sportacus says there's always a way. You shouldn’t have to deal with this on your own.”

Robbie laughs. It breaks in his throat halfway out. “I’ve been dealing with this on my own for a long time.”

“Not any more,” Stephanie says fiercely, and Robbie finds himself with an armful of small pink girl, desperately hugging him as though it could make all his problems go away. He pats her awkwardly on the back, and then, she says, in a small voice, “Don’t be afraid, Robbie, I won’t leave you,” and he’s crying again. They both are. 

“Thank you,” he says softly, rubbing comforting circles on her back. “I’m sure there’s something still left to try. We can look in the morning.”

She sniffles and raises her head to look at him. “But Robbie, you’re never awake in the morning.”

“In the afternoon, then.” He squeezes her one last time and steps back. “You’d better go before your uncle wonders where you are. Someone might think I’ve kidnapped you.”

“Okay, Robbie,” Stephanie says. “Tomorrow.”

She climbs up the pipe without looking back, because if she does she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to leave him there all on his own. She wipes her face clean on the hem of her dress before she gets home, and forces a smile onto her face for her uncle, her poor uncle who doesn't even know about all the things he's lost. About all the people who should have been there, filling Lazytown with life.

She doesn’t get to sleep for a long time, and when she does, the tears are still wet on her face.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I've written and rewritten a bunch of stuff for this and this chapter is still only 3k. I know how it's going to end, it's just getting all the details in place and not sounding like an idiot, you know? Anyway, thank you for sticking around even thought I made you all wait so long.

Stephanie doesn’t feel better when she wakes up in the morning. Her throat is kind of sticky, and her eyes feel like they’ve swelled up in her head. A glance in the bathroom mirror shows that she looks just as bad as she feels. It’s horrible to think, but she’s almost glad her uncle is a bit inattentive. She shouldn’t have any trouble passing it off as a bad cold. She scrubs her face with cold water and runs a brush through her hair, and she looks a little better, at least, even if she doesn’t feel it.

“Good morning, Uncle Milford,” she says. He’s in the kitchen, as usual, cooking her a nice, healthy breakfast. “Can I have a glass of water? I don’t feel very well.”

“Oh dear,” he says, trying to fetch a cup from the cupboard and fumbling it until it drops in the sink. “You don’t look well. Maybe you should lie down for a while.”

“I don’t think I can sleep any more. I might just sit in the sun for a little while.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” he says. “Oh! You’d better make sure you have lots to eat so you have enough energy to get better!” 

He piles a plate high with pancakes, and Stephanie smiles wanly at him and walks around to the sink to get the cup of water herself. “Thank you, Uncle. These look great.”

He’s doing his best to look after her, and she appreciates it, but she feels like she might vomit if she eats anything. She grabs a few from the plate and runs outside before he can ask her any more questions. She can’t act normal knowing everything she does about Lazytown. If she disappeared, would anyone miss her? 

She walks outside, head down so that her hair covers her face, and drops the pancakes into a clump of coriander by the mailbox. The launching tube on the side taunts her, as if to say that there are problems that even Sportacus can’t solve.

“I’m going to ask him for help anyway,” she says defiantly. The tube slides into the launcher easily, and jets out into the sky when she pulls on the lever. She kicks the heel of her shoe idly against the mailbox and wonders what she’ll do if Sportacus _can’t_ help. Maybe she could convince her uncle to move to Busycity with her. He’d have to find another job, but maybe it would be better in the end for them to just put this all behind them. For Lazytown and Glanni Glaepur to be forgotten forever.

“Hey, Stephanie!” Sportacus calls out, jumping down from his airship and landing nimbly in front of her. “I got- are you okay?”

He tips her chin up with a gentle hand and looks into her eyes, still red-rimmed from the night before. “Stephanie, what happened? Was someone mean to you?”

She pulls her head away, looking down at the ground he can’t see that she’s about to cry again. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Sportacus says. “We can go sit by the tree in the field for a while. It should be nice and quiet.”

Her hand reaches out for his and she lets him lead her out of the town gates to the old oak tree. “All you have to do is sit down,” he says, pressing a bottle of water into her hands. “Can you feel the earth beneath you? There’s a breeze today. Take a little bit of time to think about how it feels. Listen to the rustling it makes in the leaves. Think about the world around you.”

Now that he’s mentioned it, she can feel the wind against her skin. As Sportacus guides her, she touches the grass, bristly and green and cool. The bark of the tree is rough and snags on the fabric of her dress when she leans against it. When she closes her eyes, she can hear a bird chirping in the high branches of the tree, and water is running somewhere nearby. When he passes her a flower, she breathes in deeply to smell it. It smells bitter, and when she opens her eyes she finds she’s clutching a small daisy.

“Do you feel a bit better?” Sportacus asks kindly.

“Much better,” Stephanie says. “Did you do a magic thing to help me?”

Sportacus laughs. “No, of course not. Sometimes it helps, when you have a lot of worries, to focus on the things that are nearby. You're a child of the earth. You feel more comfortable when you are near to her. She’s a friend to you, just like I am.”

“About that,” Stephanie says. “You need to stop trying to make friends with Robbie.”

Sportacus looks at her sharply. “What? Why?”

“Robbie says there’s a big magic on this town, one that Number Nine left. If you make friends with Robbie, you’ll break it, because the hero’s not supposed to be friends with the villain.”

“But why would Number Nine cast a spell on the whole town?” Sportacus says. “That would take a lot of magic.”

“Would it? It isn’t a very big town,” Stephanie says pointedly.

“I guess not,” Sportacus says. “There’s Robbie, the Mayor, and Miss Busybody, and you five children.”

“And that doesn’t strike you as strange?”

Sportacus looks uncomfortable. “Should it? It’s a little odd that you have all this space for just a few of you, but I thought maybe that was just how things are done here.”

“But nobody has any parents! No-one leaves children to live on their own, especially not ones our age.”

“Oh,” Sportacus says slowly, wrinkling his brow in confusion. “Where I am from, the elders take turns teaching and caring for the younger ones. I thought that Robbie and your uncle and Miss Busybody had been left to take care of you. I don’t really know how hu- how you do it here.”

“Not like this. Robbie says they all got trapped in another world because of the old villain. If we could get them back, everything would be okay again.”

“Another _world_? This all sounds very complicated. How did this happen?”

“Well Robbie made a machine that brought him here from a different universe, and then the villain that was here before used it to go to another universe again and accidentally took most of the town with him. But Robbie and everyone else were out in the woods, so they stayed behind. And Nine cast a spell to make everyone forget, so they weren’t sad.”

“Stephanie, this is much more serious than I thought,” Sportacus says, eyes wide. “Start from the beginning. And tell me _everything_.”

She repeats the story Robbie had told her while the frown on Sportacus’ face grows increasingly larger. When he finally speaks, he says, “That’s awful! Stephanie, we have to do something to help him.”

“But what _can_ we do, Sportacus?” Stephanie says. “Robbie can’t build the machine again, and without it, they’re trapped forever.”

“I don’t know, Stephanie. But I will think about it. There is always a way.”

“I wish it hadn’t ever happened in the first place,” Stephanie says. “Robbie’s really sad, Sportacus. He thinks it’s all his fault.”

“He seemed a lot happier after he spent time with you the other day. All you can really do is be there for him. And Stephanie,” he says, and taking her hands, “try not to let it make you too sad either. This is a lot to think about. If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here.”

“Thank you,” she says, her eyes blurring over with a fresh layer of tears. 

“It’s okay, Stephanie. We’ll work it out,” he says, and pulls her into a hug. She cries openly into his shoulder, the silvery accents digging into her cheek slightly. She feels bad that she’s getting his shirt wet, but Sportacus is rubbing her back comfortingly and murmuring that it’s okay. Her sobs gradually turn into smaller sniffles and she squeezes him once more before letting go. Sportacus offers her a handkerchief and she takes it gratefully, wiping off her face and blowing her nose.

“I feel a bit better now,” she says. 

Sportacus smiles. “Sometimes you just need to get it all out. Let’s have something to eat, and then you can play with your friends for a while. I think they miss you.”

He passes her an apple, and she crunches into it gratefully, suddenly ravenous. It probably didn’t help that she hadn’t had breakfast. Sportacus finishes first and passes her a banana, then drops down into a series of complicated push-ups while she finishes eating. She’s taking a final mouthful of banana as his crystal beeps and he jumps into action. 

“Come on, Stephanie!”

They rush into town to find Ziggy’s lollipop is stuck down a drain, and he’s got his arm stuck trying to get it out. Sportacus bends the grille out a little so Ziggy can slide his hand out, then bends it back. 

“But my lollipop is still down there!” Ziggy wails.

“I don’t know that we should try to get it out,” Stephanie says dubiously. “The drain is really dirty. Don’t you have another one at home?”

“Well, yeah,” Ziggy sniffles. “But I want this one!”

Sportacus smiles reassuringly at him. “Sometimes, Ziggy, accidents happen. They don’t always end nicely, but we have to try to make the best of it.”

“But… but-” Ziggy says, and tries to stick his hand into the drain again.

“Why don’t you go find the others, Stephanie? I think Ziggy and I might be here for a while.”

“Okay, Sportacus,” Stephanie says, and runs off to the park. Pixel is using some kind of a machine to pitch a bunch of softballs to Trixie, and they’re more than happy to let Stephanie have a go with it. It’s really hard! She’s pretty good at softball, and she manages to hit most of the balls until she yawns widely and misses a really easy ball while her eyes are closed. Trixie laughs.

“What’s the matter, Pinkie, not enough sleep?”

“Yeah, I’m really tired,” she says, and hands the bat back. “Here, you can have a go again. I might go and sit down on the bench for a second.”

“Have some water, too,” Pixel says, handing her a bottle. “It’s really hot today, you need to make sure you’re drinking enough.”

“Thanks, guys,” she says. 

“I need to practise so I can beat you anyway,” Trixie says. “Rest for as looong as you want.”

Stephanie laughs and flops down on the bench. She actually is really tired. She might just lie down for a second…

* * *

“… sleeping on _my_ bench?” 

“It’s not yours, it’s _mine_.”

“Shh, you’re going to wake her up!”

“No, I’m awake,” Stephanie says, sitting up slowly. Her back is kind of stiff. How does Robbie even sleep on these benches? She forces her eyes open to find herself surrounded by her friends. Robbie is standing off to the side, pillow in hand. “It’s okay, guys, I just couldn’t sleep very well last night. I’ll be okay tomorrow. You can keep playing.”

“Well, if you say so,” Pixel says, and runs off, basketball in hand, only to have it stolen mid-dribble by Trixie. Stingy and Ziggy follow, and Stephanie slides over so Robbie can sit down on the bench too.

“I talked to Sportacus,” she says. 

“I saw,” Robbie says. “I thought I told you not to tell any of your little friends?”

“Sportacus isn’t little. Anyway, he said he’d help. Isn’t it better that he knows?”

Robbie sighs and leans back, hugging his cushion against his chest. “It’s okay. Just don’t get your hopes up. Nine couldn’t help me, so I don’t know why Sportacus would. Maybe he’ll realise it’s useless and leave town too.”

“Robbie,” Stephanie says. “I don’t know why you want Sportacus to leave town so much. He isn’t a bad person.”

“Because Lazytown’s supposed to be lazy,” Robbie says, yawning. “It might break the illusion.”

Stephanie fixes him with a sharp glare. “Robbie Rotten, I know what you look like when you’re lying, and you’re lying right now. Besides, you told me yourself that everyone remembers Lazytown as having a villain _and_ a hero.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters! He’s my friend, and I want him to stay in Lazytown once we’ve fixed this.”

Robbie stares silently at the ground for a few seconds, then mumbles, “I do too.”

“Sorry?”

“I wish he’d stay, too,” Robbie says clearly. “It _hurts_ having to turn him down every time, okay? And he keeps asking, and I keep having to push him away, and he probably hates me by now. I’d hate me if I were him.”

“Oh, Robbie,” Stephanie says.

“It would- be easier if he left,” Robbie admits. “One of these days, I’m not going to be able to say no.”

“I told him about the spell,” Stephanie says hesitantly. “He’s going to stop trying to be your friend, so the spell doesn’t break.”

“Yeah, so the spell doesn’t break. Sure,” Robbie says, and stands up abruptly. “Well, if I can’t sleep here, I’m going to go home. Who wants to sit here and watch sports? Gross.”

He stalks away, and Stephanie’s stomach rumbles. What time is it? How long has it been since she ate that sportscandy Sportacus gave her?

“Hey Pixel,” she calls, and Pixel breaks off from the back of the basketball game and jogs over to her. “I’m going to go home early. I’m _really_ hungry.”

“I’m not surprised! You missed lunch because you were sleeping,” he says. “I hope you feel better tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you later!”

“Yeah, I’ll see you then. Bye, Stephanie!”

The afternoon air is still hot as she walks home. Sportacus’ airship drifts high in the sky above the town, comforting and familiar. She eats the pancakes left in the fridge, and the rest of the afternoon drifts by as she tries to bake a quiche. It comes out a little flat, but her uncle is more than happy to eat it.

She snuggles up in bed at the end of the day, much more hopeful than the night before.

* * *

Stephanie sits bolt upright in bed as the sun crests the horizon, ideas whipping through her brain. If Robbie can build the right kind of machine, she thinks, then she could do it. It wouldn’t be perfect, but they could save everyone. She dashes downstairs and grabs an apple from the fruit bowl. The rays of the rising sun catch on her hair and shoulders as she runs to the edge of town and bangs on Robbie’s hatch. “Robbie!” she yells. “Wake up!”

Nobody answers, but after a few moments the lid of the hatch swings open, baring the dark tunnel below. She jumps in and rockets through the pipes into Robbie’s chair, which he’s thankfully not sitting in. 

“What’s so important that you had to wake me in the middle of the night?” he complains. “Did Sportaflop finally leave town for good?”

Stephanie shakes her head. “It’s not the middle of the night, it’s the morning. But Robbie, I thought of something really important. You can’t make the Dimensionaliser again, I know. What about making something else?”

Robbie straightens up and frowns. “Like what? No matter what we do, if they’re in an alternate dimension we can’t save them.”

“But what if they weren’t?”

“Then another machine might help. Pinkie, I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

Stephanie tosses the apple from hand to hand. “Okay. So. What if we went back in time?”

“No. No way,” Robbie says, snatching the apple from the air and shoving it in a drawer. Stephanie rolls her eyes. “It was bad enough me messing with parallel dimensions, we’re not going to try to go back and change the timeline. That’s just a recipe for disaster, even if you _could_ somehow manage to create a closed time loop, which we can’t. Besides, what would we even do? Try to stop Glanni? He’s far better at magic than me. There’s no way I could overpower him.”

“But it’s possible?”

“Of course it’s possible to make one. I’m a technical genius with magic on his side. That doesn’t mean I _will_.”

“Do you trust me?”

“What?”

“Robbie. Do you trust me?”

Robbie deflates. “Against my better judgement, yes,” he says.

“Then make it,” Stephanie says. “I need to go and talk to Sportacus. I’ll be back later.”

“Stephanie,” Robbie says, but she’s already scrambling up the pipe and out into the sunshine. “Stephanie!”

* * *

“Sportacus, I need your help. Please come down. Stephanie,” Sportacus reads. “I hope she’s not in trouble.”

He puts the message tube and the letter into the recycler and calls for the ladder. Two backflips and a cartwheel later, he meets her beside the mailbox.

“Stephanie! What can I do to help?”

“Sorry, Sportacus, but there’s nothing you can do to help this time,” Stephanie says apologetically.

“But… you wrote me a letter,” he says, confused.

“Well, it’s more like I need your help _getting_ help,” she says. “We need Number Nine.”

Sportacus frowns. “Are you sure I can’t help? Why does it need to be Nine?”

“I’ll explain it to you later,” Stephanie says, glancing around. “The sooner he comes here, the better. Can you get in contact with him?”

“Of course, but-”

Stephanie shakes her head. “Not here,” she says, pointing behind him. He turns around to see Ziggy and Stingy a few metres behind them, bickering over possession of a lollipop.

“Okay,” Sportacus says. “I’ll call him. I don’t know how long it will take him to get here.”

“Thanks, Sportacus,” Stephanie says. “Can you send him down to Robbie’s lair when he does? You should come, too. Just make sure nobody sees you.”

“I will probably see you before then, Stephanie. He lives a long way away.”

“Then send it as soon as you can. We need to keep everyone busy until then so Robbie can build something. Will you help me?”

“Of course, Stephanie. You can count on me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, just so everyone knows, I'm going off the Victorian meanings for flowers, so if you look up something and it tells you it's associated with norse mythology or whatever, you can just ignore that bit. I am definitely aiming for the childhood/innocence version of the meaning, not the one associated with Freya.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm imagining Dansálfurinn to look like one of the figurines of the Morris Dancers I saw in Munich, the Zauberer (Wizard). If anyone's confused by my description, then googling that should give you a good idea of what he's supposed to look like.

Three days later, Stephanie looks up in the sky to see something large and yellow drawing close. “Sportacus, what’s that?” she says.

Sportacus swings around and stares into the distance. “Pabbi’s hot air balloon!” he says. “Stephanie, my father is here!”

He jumps onto the wall and waves hugely. Someone inside the balloon waves back and the whole thing changes direction slightly to head directly towards them. 

“I’ve never seen a hot air balloon before,” Stephanie says. “Do you think he’d let me look at it?”

“Of course,” Sportacus says. “Come on, Stephanie, let’s go meet him.”

He flips towards the meadow, and Stephanie jogs after him. The balloon deflates slightly as it descends towards the open field. Sportacus grabs the ropes that come flying down and begins securing them while Stephanie gazes up at the balloon in amazement.

A man vaults out of the basket and lands proudly on the ground right in front of them. His mustard-yellow pants billow slightly in the wind, and his chest is protected by a hardened brown breastplate. He looks like Sportacus, Stephanie thinks. It must be his father.

“Pabbi!” Sportacus says excitedly. “How are you?”

“Are you number nine?” Stephanie asks.

Another, taller man vaults out of the basket. Strands of bells sewn to his golden tunic and left leg jingle merrily. His deep sleeves swish in the air, and on his head is an intricate headdress tied in place with an ethereal, translucent sash. His brown eyes sparkle.

“ _I_ am number nine,” he says, peering at her closely. “My name is Dansálfurinn. Are you the little girl who called me here? Do you wish to train with me? I can see in your eyes that you love dancing. It’s pleasing to see that your sports elf knows when he’s out of his depth.”

“Sportacus isn’t out of his depth,” Stephanie says loyally, even though Sportacus is deep in conversation with his father in a language she doesn’t know and isn’t paying attention to what Dansálfurinn is saying. “And he isn’t an elf.”

Dansálfurinn laughs loudly. “My dear, we three are _all_ elves,” he says. “Íþróttaálfurinn, come introduce yourself to the child. Then we can all sit down to a nice meal and discuss why I am here.”

Sportacus and his father break off from their conversation and turn towards Stephanie. “Stephanie, this is my father, Íþróttaálfurinn,” Sportacus says clearly. “He was number ten before I was. You can call him that, if you like.”

“No, I think I’ve got it,” Stephanie says, and sounds it out slowly. “You say it… ee-throat-owl-fuh-rn, right? And he’s dans-owl-fuh-rn.”

“Close enough,” Dansálfurinn says. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Let’s all go up to my airship. We can talk there without being overheard. Just be careful of the buttons on the floor,” Sportacus says. He calls for the ladder and motions for Stephanie to climb up first, followed closely by the three elves. Sportacus slices an apple and passes it around the group.

“Robbie told us what happened,” Stephanie says once they’re all comfortably settled in a circle on the floor. Dansálfurinn looks shocked. 

“Robbie Rotten is still here?” he says. “I thought… there was no reason for him to stay in Lazytown. I thought he would have left.”

“Who is Robbie Rotten?” Íþróttaálfurinn asks.

“Someone that I failed, as I failed most of Lazytown,” Dansálfurinn says. “He was taken in by the criminal Glanni Glæpur. With Robbie’s unwitting help, Glanni took Robbie’s most ingenious invention and stole away most of the town into another dimension. I dulled the memories of those left until we could retrieve our missing friends, but we were never successful. Robbie blamed himself, but the blame should rest with me. I was supposed to protect the town, and I failed.”

“But I know how to get them back,” Stephanie says urgently. “That’s why I called you here. I need your help.”

Dansálfurinn raises an eyebrow. It disappears under the rim of his hat, making him look a little unbalanced. “Do you expect me to believe that a small girl has succeeded in finding a way to traverse dimensions when a magical elf and a literal genius could not?”

“No,” Stephanie says, “I expect you to believe that Robbie can build a time machine, though. We’re going to snatch the villagers and bring them forward in time _before_ Glanni can take them.”

“It will work,” Sportacus says. “They’ll still disappear at the same time. And Glanni wanted the machine, not the townsfolk. That was just an accident.”

“But they don’t know who Sportacus and I are, and they won’t trust Robbie. You need to come back and be Lazytown’s hero. They’ll trust you.” Stephanie looks at him hopefully, trying to read his intentions in his face. He’s a hero, after all. Sportacus would never let them down. Surely Dansálfurinn will help them.

“If there’s a way to save them, then I have to try,” Dansálfurinn says finally. 

“I’ll get Robbie,” Stephanie says. “My uncle is helping Miss Busybody today, so let’s all meet in town hall. Mr Íþróttaálfurinn, since you’re here too, will you help us?”

Sportacus’ father smiles widely. “I had no idea when I agreed to give Dansálfurinn a ride here that it was going to be this exciting,” he says. “Of course I’ll help.”

“Then you’d better come with me,” Stephanie says. “Let’s go save them.”

* * *

Stephanie sits on the bench near the town hall and sniffles. Her hair is a little messy, and by her side are two large luggage bags. They’re mostly full of sportscandy, not clothes, but nobody would be able to tell from looking at her. She looks the very picture of a lost child. A couple spot her and hurry towards her, kneeling down so they can see her better.

“What’s the matter, little girl?” a short, blonde woman says. 

She sniffles again for effect. “I came to visit my Uncle Milford, but he’s not here,” she says. “And my bags are really heavy, and I don’t know where he lives.” 

The woman pats her shoulder soothingly. “Milford Meanswell, the mayor? There, there. He must be around here somewhere. Look— over there is the hero Number Nine. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you find your uncle.”

“Number Nine!” the other woman calls. “Would you be able to help us?”

Nine leaps into the air, legs outstretched, and seems to float for a second before he lands and twirls elegantly over to the two women. “Of course! What can I do for you?”

“This poor girl is lost and looking for her uncle, the mayor,” the blonde woman says. “Have you seen him?”

“Ah, yes, he asked me to take her to his house to get settled in,” Dansálfurinn says, picking up Stephanie’s bags with ease. "Could you kind ladies do me a favour in return? My good friend Sportacus here is going to take over from me as town hero when I leave, and he’s meant to be meeting Mayor Meanswell in town hall. Could you take him there for me?”

“Of course, Number Nine,” the taller one says, and smiles cheerily at the blue hero. “We’ll show your friend where to go.”

“Come along, Stephanie,” Dansálfurinn says, and she follows him down the road, looking for the next place to set up their trap. Behind them, Íþróttaálfurinn, dressed as Sportacus, says “Ladies first”, and the two women step into the field that’s been installed in the front doorway of town hall. It makes a strange zapping sound as the women pass through it and are thrown into the future. Íþróttaálfurinn flips over to Stephanie and gives them a thumbs up. 

“There’s three more coming from the park,” he says, “but we need to hurry. Glanni’s on the move. If worst comes to worst, we might need to just grab the last few and run for it.”

“Don’t be pessimistic, Íþróttaálfurinn,” Dansálfurinn says. “We’re going to make it. Okay, Stephanie, in position. Here they come.”

* * *

Sportacus steadies the women as they pass through the portal, stumbling into the mayor’s office. “Ah, thank you, Solla, Halla,” Mayor Meanswell says. “This must be Sportacus.”

“Yes, Dansálfurinn asked us to bring him here,” Solla says. “May we go? We were on our way to help Goggi set up a new sound system.”

“Oh, of course, my dears!” Mayor Meanswell says. “Everything should be just as you left it. Run along, now!”

Sportacus moves back to lean against the wall near the portal, and Robbie pulls off his mask, running a hand over his face. 

“That’s almost all of them,” he says.

“That’s fantastic,” Sportacus says. “Listen, Robbie. Once this is over, do you think that we could maybe… be friends?”

Silence hangs between them for a moment. He can say yes, Robbie realises. Now that everyone's being saved, there's nothing to make him try to drive Sportacus out of town any more. He won't have to force his face into a frown whenever Sportacus smiles at him, or get trapped in awful situations trying to carry out villainous plots his heart isn't really in. He can just... have it all. 

The portal sparks to life and Robbie hurriedly jams the mask back on. “Ah, who is this?” he says affably as Sportacus catches the children stumbling through the door. “Did you bring a friend with you?”

“Thith ith Thportacuth,” a small girl with shocking red hair lisps. When she smiles, her front teeth are missing. 

“Wonderful!” Robbie says. “Now, children, why don’t you run along and play?”

“Okay!” they say, and run out the door. Seconds later, Dansálfurinn, Stephanie and Íþróttaálfurinn burst through the portal, dragging two small children and a tall boy with them. Sportacus slides out the door in the confusion before somebody notices there are two of him.

“I _told_ you there wasn’t enough time,” Íþróttaálfurinn says irritably. 

“All’s well that ends well,” Dansálfurinn says lightly. “Terribly sorry about the rough treatment, Maggi, another one of Glanni’s plots went wrong, I’m sad to say.”

“I’m sure it was better than leaving me there. Thanks, man,” Maggi says. 

“Yes, thank you,” the children chorus. 

“It was our pleasure,” Íþróttaálfurinn says. “Now, Mayor Meanswell, you said you wanted to talk to me about something important?”

“Thanks again,” Maggi says, and herds the children out of the room. The second they’re gone, Robbie strips his costume off and moves over to the entrance to remove the fizzing electrodes from the doorframe.

"Glanni acivating the Dimensionaliser should have destroyed the ones we installed in the past," Robbie explains as he digs metal out of the wood with a flat-bladed screwdriver. "Nobody will be able to come through accidentally." 

“How did you get it to only work when you walked inwards, not outwards?” Dansálfurinn says curiously, watching him from his place against the mayor’s desk where he was stretching his legs at an increasingly improbable angle. 

“How many days do you have for me to explain it to you?” Robbie asks dryly.

Dansálfurinn blanches. “Never mind.”

“You should probably go and take the glamour off the townsfolk, Dans,” Íþróttaálfurinn says. Dansálfurinn rolls his eyes and twirls the curtain into a rope before sliding out through the window. Robbie works another piece of metal out while Stephanie watches quietly.

“So,” Íþróttaálfurinn says, breaking the silence. “What’s going on with you and my son?”

Robbie glances at him, unconcerned, before returning to his work. “I would have thought even an old man like you could figure it out. I’m a villain. I try to run him out of town.”

Íþróttaálfurinn snorts. “I may be old, boy, but I’m not stupid. A blind man could see the offer my son’s made.” He meets Stephanie’s eyes, and she thinks about the gadget sitting in her room that Pixel had slipped her the day before, about the story the flowers had told once she knew what to look for. “Your clever girl there knows. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Robbie demands. 

“Sportacus likes you,” Stephanie says. It’s an incredible understatement. Sportacus thinks you’re beautiful, she might have said instead. Sportacus thinks you have hidden depths. Sportacus thinks you’re mysterious. Sportacus is in love with you.

“The only thing Sportacus has offered me is his friendship,” Robbie says grumpily to Íþróttaálfurinn. “Now that I don’t need to keep the spell running, I was planning on taking him up on it. Is that all?”

“For now,” Íþróttaálfurinn says. “We’ll meet again, Robbie. I look forward to more interesting times.”

He dives out the window, and Stephanie runs through the building to meet him on the street. She can hear Robbie complaining loudly about awful, extravagant elves and their need for a showy exit, and a laugh bubbles up inside her. Robbie isn’t ready just yet, and she’s sure Sportacus must have been lonely in this tiny town with nobody but children for company. They both need to find themselves before they find each other, but they’re both on their way. Everything’s going to be okay.

Íþróttaálfurinn is waiting for her outside. She looks up at him and meets his eyes seriously. “I’ll tell him one day. I don’t think Sportacus meant anybody to know what they meant, not just yet.”

He smiles softly. “That sounds like my son, the heartsick little fool,” he says. “He never did know how to keep his feelings bottled up. It’s reassuring to know there’s someone clever here to look out for them.”

“They’ll get there eventually,” she says, looking out at the town. The houses are alight with life, and the shouts of children laughing and playing fill the streets. Lazytown was finally how it was supposed to be -- happy.

“Yes,” Íþróttaálfurinn says, and offers her an apple. “I think they will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, here we are at the end. This is the longest story I've finished in a long while, so I'm so happy you stuck around for it. I am, of course, going to write a sequel where they bicker and go on cute dates and get together, because it would be cruel to set all this up and then not follow through. You're welcome.


End file.
